BLE tracker still not working

Configuration
1

I have the BLE tracker set up and it’s still not detecting my phones as home. It detected my two phones at least once or they wouldn’t be in the known_devices.yaml. I have about a hundred of these lines in my log, so I know it’s at least sort of working:

2019-11-09 22:38:08 DEBUG (SyncWorker_14) [homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker.device_tracker] Adding BLE_58:CB:52:12:2C:A9 to BLE tracker
2019-11-09 22:38:08 DEBUG (SyncWorker_14) [homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker.device_tracker] Adding BLE_8C:8E:F2:D8:7D:E8 to BLE tracker
2019-11-09 22:38:08 DEBUG (SyncWorker_14) [homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker.device_tracker] Adding BLE_59:99:99:0B:5F:E3 to BLE do not track
2019-11-09 22:38:08 DEBUG (SyncWorker_14) [homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker.device_tracker] Adding BLE_F9:0E:94:4D:42:AE to BLE do not track

My config:

device_tracker:
  - platform: bluetooth_le_tracker
    interval_seconds: 60
    consider_home: 180
    track_new_devices: false

Yes I’m sure BT is on 24/7 on my devices (one Android, one iPhone). Wifi tracking is working great for the Android device; flawlessly actually. It’s awful with the iPhone which is why I’m even bothering with BTLE. What am I missing?

2

Are those devices “new”, ie new to home assistant? I would think this would be stopping the integration picking them up.

3

The two devices I care about are in the known list. I changed their names though.

4

Did you ever get this working? I’m trying to set it up and there doesn’t seem to be a clear documentation on how to get it working on HassIO. On my side, I can’t even get it to discover my devices (get the “No Bluetooth LE devices to track!” error and when I add them manually to known_devices that error is gone but then it just sets the state to “not_home”.

5

No :frowning: Every time HA reboots it adds new devices to the yaml. It continues to only check as it reboots, and never after.

Asuswrt WiFi tracking still flawless.

6

Are you sure your phone uses Bluetooth LE? Bluetooth LE is usually for small battery powered things. Phones usually just use Bluetooth not Bluetooth LE - they are both entirely different. Your phone should most likely be using the standard Bluetooth tracker in home assistant.

7

Are you sure? According to GSMArena, the Pixel 3 has:

Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE, aptX HD

LE is in that list. Thought all phones had it by now.

8

I’m having the same problem tracking my Tile devices and fitness trackers using BLE. It works fine for Bluetooth on our phones, but BLE dies after a while.

9

Tried the normal bluetooth integration btw ? Should work fine with your phone too.

1 Like
10

I’ve tried normal today, but the system almost crashed (it was almost 90% offline after restart) and I could hardly access it again to deactivate this option

11

Hi all,
in my experience I was able to use both the trackers, normal and le: smartphones are tracked
using [ platform: bluetooth_tracker ] and smartwatches using the le version. In my case was
anyway hard to let them work together probably because of my hardware configuration, I have a
Raspbee shield for the Rpi 3b+ that use the serial port normally used by bluetooth
(/dev/ttyAMA0), so some change needed in configuration at boot and sometime I saw they were
interfering each other and from time to time needed a reset of bluetooth to start over. So now I
turned off the LE tracker and things are more stable for me. If I’ll find a more accurate
configuration maybe I’ll turn it on again, have the watch to be tracked together with the phone
sometime is better and more accurate.